Hacker News Reader

Comment by fireattack | Hacker News Reader

Reddit is one of a few websites that I feel dedicated app works much better than browser, but I use 3rd party one(s).

I don't agree, for one b/c Reddit is a links aggregator and opening links works best in a full browser instead of a shitty in-app web view, plus it's the little things like ability to copy/paste or go back to a previous page, that are sometimes emulated in native apps, but never work well.

But even if you think Reddit works better in a native app for you, that's by design. Reddit is making the web experience shitty on purpose, to drive users to their app.

You can simply configure web pages to open directly in browser.

And a dedicated app is able to handle certain links better than native browsers, like RES on desktop. One example would be to directly open the image instead of Imgur page.

Also if we're talking about Android, I don't feel webview is too much different from a native browser now; all the histories, auto-fills are shared with my main browser (Chrome). Of course, it is just my PERSONAL use case.

There are many many hugely active communicates which are far more than link aggregators on reddit. Communities with 100s of 1000s or subscribers.

"Reddit is a links aggregator" feels pretty inaccurate. Some subreddits, especially the big and lowest common denominator ones may be mostly link sharing, but most of the ones I'm on are communities sharing questions, opinions, jokes, images, and stories.

Yup. Playing a difficult Minecraft pack the first stop is r/feedthebeast to look at other people's advice. Later I'd return with questions most of which will be FAQs. Example, last week I made Project Ozone 3's fluid container that has an infinite amount of any liquid you put inside it. First question I had was, how do I empty this to put something else in? Because if the answer is "You can't" I need to pick very carefully what to use it for. The trouble with the correct answer "Shift left click a Gauge Dropper in the UI" is that I thought I'd tried that. So did lots of people, but Reddit has a comment thread patiently walking us through each step and yup, it works.

You missed one critical feature: tabs.

That's because they deliberately make it terrible to convince you to install the app. They ruin the experience even more with all the nagging they do even if you have the option to be based about the app disabled. There is no reason their mobile site needs to be as terrible as it is.

But that largely reflects management's decision to discourage mobile web use in favor of app usage.

There's nothing intrinsic about Reddit that makes it worthy of a dedicated mobile app.

pretty sure a legacy interface that is gonna get killed at some point, but

https://www.reddit.com/.compact

is absolutely the best view on mobile.

Is there any app that can essentially open threads in a new tab like in a browser? This is the one thing keeping me in the mobile browser. Well, that and my girlfriends reddit app seems to fail to load GIFs a decent fraction of the time.

I'm not sure what you mean. So you can switch back and forth between threads with ease?

Yes, or more like, queue them up for reading later. That's how I use reddit: scroll through the front page or whatever subreddit, middle click everything of interest, then eventually get around to reading or closing said tabs.

I use boost for Android and I find it enjoyable and flawless. I have no business with boost, I'm just an happy user.

Doesn't have tabs :(

The old design works well on a browser (now old.reddit). I make it a point to never use the new social network themed reddit, or it’s chat (god, why?) or the default app due to the popup when you access reddit on a mobile browser. Apollo is much better anyhow (iOS only though iirc).

On a desktop, auto redirecting to old.reddit.com, with all custom subreddit CSS disabled, chat turned off, RES enabled and uBlock Origin installed is the only usable way to browse Reddit.

For a website that I spend ungodly amounts of time in, I hate that it's this way.

I also use a third party app. AlienBlue is superb and more feature rich and user friendly than the official app. Let’s enjoy it while it lasts. I suspect one day the API will be monetised (forced to display ads inline in the feed) or paid for (pricing out third parties) or entirely removed.

AlienBlue is the official app, just frozen in time in 2014.

Agree on both fronts. Reddit is way improved with an app, but the official app is trash. I prefer relay, but I know that there are many other quality apps out there that folks recommend. Feel free to comment with your favorite.

Boost (see my comment above)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com